I'm sorry, but really, what is English cricket coming to? I don't mean losing Test series - we've always done a fair bit of that. I mean, the England Test captain blubbing like a girl when he announces that he's stepping down. And Michael Vaughan, dammit, is a Yorkshire player. Would Ray Illingworth blub? Would Brian Close blub? Is this what Yorkshire gets for relaxing the birth qualification and letting in Lancastrians?
I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. It's long been apparent that the emotional incontinence of sport at every level has infected cricket too, with those group hugs, passionate embraces, leaping about and whooping and carrying on alarming. The elegant, contained, in a word classy, player is a dying breed - and, if the talk is correct, England's next captain won't be one of them. No one could ever accuse the tattooed, shaven-headed Springbok Kevin Pietersen - gifted player though he is - of being any of those things.
Note for American readers: If none of the above means anything to you, it's possible that in time it will. Cricket is creeping up on you - see this.
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Couldn't see Shane weeping, his lip gloss would run.
ReplyDeleteI understand it enough, Nige, to know that I'm with you on the emotional incontinence. By the way, there is a Philadelphia Cricket Club.
ReplyDeleteI know nothing about cricket, other than that it looks cool: years ago we lived near Haverford College and we used to watch their cricket team gambol on the green.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I love baseball and I believe it derives from cricket. With American rules, bien sur.
Explain this to me, Nige: Years ago when that movie "Time After Time" came out (Malcolm MacDowell as Jack the Ripper) there was a reference to his playing cricket at school and bowling the ball to break the batter's legs -- what would that be about? I mean, how could the bowler do that without getting thrown out of the game?
Ah Susan - I think this must have been a reference to the leg break - all is explained here. The vocabulary of cricket is a wondrous thing.
ReplyDeleteWe Brits tend to think of baseball as a grownup version of our playground game, rounders. Having seen the game once, I must say that's what it looked like to me, except the bowling was terrifyingly fast and the throwing quite extraordinary. If 2020 cricket makes it to the US, which it well might, it will give you a very rough idea of cricket, but at the highest (Test) level it is a game of endless subtlety and beauty.
Nige, you've let me down. One of my closest friends happens to be from Lancashire (if, that is, you ignore all that nonsense with the metropolitan counties). He would be very hurt by the insult if it weren't for the fact that they're made of sterner stuff on that side of the Pennines.
ReplyDeleteNo offence intended Dick - it's just that I always loved the way Yorks clung onto the birth qualification. I've just found some footage of Brian Close in action - note lack of helmet. What a man...
ReplyDeleteAs a Yorkshireman i have to say Lancastrians are a rum sort, queer like, they talk funny and are soft on Communism. Even though i've been living in Manchester the last 18 months i still regard them as vaguely suspect and on the whole not human.
ReplyDeleteAs a Yorkshireman i have to say Lancastrians are a rum sort, queer like, they talk funny and are soft on Communism. Even though i've been living in Manchester the last 18 months i still regard them as vaguely suspect and on the whole not human.
ReplyDeleteYour a typical Yorkshireman elberry, saying everything twice.
ReplyDeleteIt;s pathetic....really it is. It's why we don't win, cricket has been usurped!
ReplyDelete